Are You Underestimating How Much Work is Required To Be Great
The Amplified Impact Podcast
November 22nd, 2023
I’m a firm believer that with dedication, you can excel in any skill. But here’s the catch…it takes a lot of repetitions.
Often, we underestimate the effort needed to get really good at something. I’ve experienced this firsthand in content creation.
Recently, preparing for a speaking event, I discovered it takes about 80 hours of rehearsal for a 40-minute speech…around 100 times practicing.
It’s a lot, but it’s what’s needed to be just ‘good enough.’
This made me reevaluate the effort required to excel in any field.
It’s a long road, and recalibrating our expectations of what it takes can prevent burnout and maintain motivation.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Recalibrating our expectations of how much effort it takes to get to that place of being good or great is helpful to make sure that you don’t get burned out and lose motivation too soon, because it’s a long road.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
I firmly believe that you can become good, like above average, good at practically any skill or activity that you put your mind to. With enough effort and enough dedication, enough repetitions, you can become top tier. And by top tier, let’s say top 15%, and I’m just throwing out numbers that’s not rooted in any kind of scientific fact or anything like that. But I believe for the most part with some skills, there being some exceptions based off of, say, physiological, like basketball, you’re probably never going to be a top 15% basketball player if you’re four two. It’s probably just not in the cards for you. But for the most part, for most skills, you can get to that level if you just put in enough work, if you put in enough repetitions. And this has been something I find very tremendously empowering my own life. Whether or not it’s true, it is one of those beliefs that despite being true or false, does not matter because it empowers me and it moves me towards a more positive direction than believing the alternative.
Anthony Vicino:
So I might be living a delusion, I might be living a lie, but by living that lie, it will lead me towards achieving the results in life that I seek more often than not. So it’s a beneficial fruitful lie to believe. Not even sure if it is a lie, but it might not be true. What I’m saying here is that you can become top 15% in any skill with enough effort and practice. But that’s the part that I want to come to because I believe that I can be like top tier. Maybe when I was younger, it was more delusion and it was based more on me thinking that I was a special butterfly. Like I can become the best in the world at anything I put my mind to. I’ve evolved that perspective to think it’s not just me.
Anthony Vicino:
I think anybody can do that. I think we all have the capacity for greatness with enough if we do the right things for a long enough period of time. But I think the reason why a lot of people don’t buy into that narrative or why they’re struggling if you’re building a business, you’re trying to learn a skill, you’re trying to grow an audience. Whatever it is that you’re trying to do, if you’re not being met with the results yet that you want to see, it’s probably because you are underestimating how many reps it requires to actually get good at the thing. To get great at the thing. I will use that word we’ll say to get great at the thing. You are probably underestimating how many reps it takes. And this is where people will talk all about expanding your time horizon and saying, okay, I’m going to do this thing instead of for the next six months, I’m going to dedicate the next year to this.
Anthony Vicino:
I’m going to put out content every single day. I’m going to make offers every single day. I’m going to do whatever the thing is every single day for the next year. Right? But the truth of the matter is, for most people, one year of concerted effort and practice and doing the thing will make you far better at the thing than you were one year prior. But it might still not be enough. It might not be enough for you to become great at the thing in the macro sense. And so, for instance, I will use my own past as a proxy here. I was creating YouTube videos and Instagram videos and doing a podcast every single day for multiple years, probably on the frequency of maybe three years.
Anthony Vicino:
I was doing okay, maybe not video. Well, there was a period for one year. I was definitely doing a video every single year day. This year I’ve done more than one video every single day. I’m probably averaging more, like 1.7 videos every single day for this year of 2023. But in that early phase, when I was doing a ton of content, I really wasn’t getting the traction that I thought I deserved in that first year and that second year. And it was really only last year, which is my third year of content creation, where things really started to take off and starting to hit, and I’m still doing the same amount of repetitions as I was before. The thing now, though, is I have three years worth of that same output behind me.
Anthony Vicino:
So I’m four times better than I was when I started. So in that first year, if I’m doing a video a day, then at the end of that year, let’s say I have 365 reps in well, that is still roughly 900 reps behind me. Fast forward, Anthony. Three, four years. And that’s the person that past Anthony is having to compete with, right? He’s not competing just against the people who are starting in year one. He’s starting against the guys who’ve been doing this for four years and ten years. And that’s who I think of myself as competing with, too. I don’t even think I’m great at what I do yet.
Anthony Vicino:
I’m still putting in the reps, trying to catch up to guys like Tony Robbins or Alex RamosI, who’ve been doing this for much, much longer and put out way more content. And so I think the reason we get discouraged often that we’re not seeing the results in the timeline that we expect is because we’re underestimating how many reps we have to put in to get great at that thing. And I was thinking about this because I just got invited to speak at two events in the spring. One is at Raise Masters, which is my budy Hunter Thompson’s event, and there’ll be a thousand people there. I will be speaking right before Tom Bile, who is one of the best keynote speakers out there on the market. So I have to bring my A game to that one if I want to not look like a complete chump by comparison to Tom. And then a couple weeks, maybe a month later, I’ll be in Idaho speaking at the Conscious Investor Summit, which is my friend Julie Holly’s event. Much smaller, but still very important.
Anthony Vicino:
Now, as I was thinking about, okay, how do I prep for this presentation right before Tom Billu? Like, that’s a big name person. I need to bring my absolute A game and be at my best. I started working on the speech, and it’s a 40 minutes presentation, and I was like, okay, how many times do I need to rehearse this thing before I am good, before I consider myself good to go? And I was doing some research on this, and you hear things like the 10,000 hours rule, where it’s like, oh, you have to put 10,000 hours into a craft before you master it. In writing, we use the 1 million words. Like, you have to put it out a million words before you get to the good words worth saying. And so I was curious, like, what is it on a stage from a presentation, public speaking perspective? How many times do you have to rehearse a speech before you have that thing so locked in and dialed? I wanted to see what other keynote speakers and performers recommended. And the recommendation that they had was to spend 2 hours for every 1 minute of presentation. 2 hours of rehearsal for every 1 minute of presentation.
Anthony Vicino:
That is way, way more than I had anticipated. So what that means is a 40 minutes speech is 80 hours of rehearsal. 80 hours. So that means I need to rep that thing about 100 times from beginning to end. 40 minutes. And I was like, Dang, okay, so that’s like, every day between now and then, delivering that speech, and that’s what it takes to get good. Not great, but good enough. And that’s what I need to put in.
Anthony Vicino:
And so that’s where my mind went to. I’m like, I will do what’s required. I will do that work. I know how to grind. I know how to do that. But to hear those numbers, I think for most people, they’d still be like, holy crap. That’s outrageous. Why would you practice a speech 100 times? Why would you give a speech 100 times? 80 hours.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s two full work weeks dedicated to just talking to the wall, right? But that is what’s required to be great. And so recalibrating our expectations of how much effort it takes to get to that place of being good or great, I think is helpful to make sure that you don’t get burned out and lose motivation too soon, because it’s a long road. So I wanted to share that with you guys because I’m about to embark on that journey. I’ve been working on the beach right now, and we got two months to go. Three months to go before the big day and I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. So, as always, thanks for being here. Guys and gals, I appreciate you. We’ll catch you in the next episode.
Anthony Vicino:
Until then, stay happy. Focused, my friends.
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